


Bedtime Stories

by Lisa_Telramor



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Bedtime Stories, F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 01:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8037130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisa_Telramor/pseuds/Lisa_Telramor
Summary: The books Howl and Sophie choose for Morgan reflect their own childhood interests.





	Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: author's choice, author's choice, the stories we read to our children.
> 
> have been in a book HMC mood lately....

 

Howl as a child had found himself escaping his reality in any book he could get his hands on. His parents had a large bookshelf in the study full of literary classics and poetry, and one big book of mythology that he and Megan used to covet until Megan declared herself too old for fantasies and turned toward other interests. He’d always found fantasy the most appealing though, huddling up with Tolkien’s works and abusing his parents’ library card to take out books on Merlin and King Arthur. Back then he hadn’t known it for real, but the possibilities the books sparked had had him seeking out fairy rings and hunting down arcane-sounding ingredients in would-be attempts at spells.

A much younger Howl, still Howell then, had determined to become a wizard at least as great as Merlin. And Howl fancied he’d succeeded in that more or less.

The seeds of it all had been planted by that first tome of myths from his parents’ study though, first by begging for it to be read to him, and later reading on his own, burning through batteries as he read well past his appointed bedtime.

Sophie had also grown up on myths and stories, soaking up what Howl would call fairy tales and fables with the voracious appetite of a girl with much imagination and not much worldly experience. But the stories she grew up with weren’t fantastical; witches and wizards were fact. Life often fell into preordained roles, and fateful encounters and the power of favors were never something to take lightly. It had shaped her worldview for a long while, for nothing much ever happened for the eldest of three. The eldest was the most likely to fail, or to have a safe, predictable route in life. She’d always been a bit miffed by it as a child, for why should the youngest of three be the most likely to fall on the road of adventure and success?

As an adult, she looked back on the stories she grew up on as so much rubbish for the most part. Yes, she was the eldest of three and her life had more than enough adventure between her proclivity toward nosiness and being married to the King’s wizard. Granted none of the books had had an eldest of three who was a witch in her own right, but Sophie supposed that was why those were books and this was reality; she was too much herself these days to fall meekly into some role.

And so when it came to raising Morgan, when they compared notes their childhood stories were quite similar despite coming from different worlds. There were certain differences—“Everyone knows vampires aren’t _real_ , Howl.” “Yes, Sophie, but they must be real _somewhere_.” Or “Why on earth would any self-respecting witch make a house of gingerbread just to cannibalize children?” “Witches are always evil in stories from my world, Sophie.” “Well clearly they haven’t met very many witches then, now have they?”—but similar enough that they should have been able to agree to something for Morgan. But Sophie didn’t want Morgan having the same problems she had with pre-cast roles—“Is there even a role for the son of a powerful, handsome wizard?” “Shush, you.”—and Howl didn’t like most of the stories Sophie did—“Nothing happens in this story at all. You might as well tell him stories of working in the hat shop.” “Considering working in the hat shop led me to meeting you, maybe I should just tell him stories of both our lives.” “Oh, please don’t. We both know you’ll ruin our characters terribly.” “ _I’ll_ ruin them? If you told the story, you’d make yourself out to be some sort of hero.” “I was quite dashing in the end there.”—so in the end they were left with turning to stories neither of them had grown up with more often than not.

“I suppose,” Howl said as he paged through a recent purchase from Wales, “that he won’t need fairytales if he’s growing up in one.”

“But talking trains?” Sophie asked, wrinkling her nose over a book with a watercolor train with a human face. It was quite alarming looking. Many of the mechanical things from Howl’s world were strange and ominous, but something about this was even more so.

“And yet you have no problem with Seuss.”

“Well those are meant to be a nonsensical world,” Sophie said. “Morgan seems to like the ones with the dog…” Those were books Howl read to Morgan, them being written in Calcifer’s saucepan song language.

And so Morgan gained an odd collection of books growing up that had very little magic in them at all, or when they did, there were always infinite possibilities that the character could pursue and their path was never determined by what they were born into. He had books in Welsh and books in English—as Howl called the languages—and books where technology took the place of magic and he stared at pictures of telephones and computers and automobiles much like Howl had once stared down at pictures of dragons and ogres and harpies. Howl sang Welsh folk songs in his mellower moods and Sophie recounted day to day events of interest and Calcifer told stories about when he was still a star in the sky instead of a fire demon in a hearth.

Morgan grew up with trips to the moon and transforming into a cat were equally much a reality, where using a digital calculator seemed more fantastical than seeing a mermaid up close, and surprised them all by preferring books on animals to any of the books his parents had enjoyed. But then he was just as stubbornly his own person as his parents were.


End file.
